Video game review by ERIK LEIJON

Heaven forbid, but the Xbox 360 has been out since November, and up until this point we’ve still not seen an excruciatingly technical, post-apocalyptic, Japanese mech combat/strategy game on its console.

Well, for the five people who care, those dark days are over. I jest, but the mech genre, known for being as much about endless tweaking of your machine as about the actual fighting itself, has a dedicated yet small group of hardcore fans. If you found yourself plunking down 200 bucks on a Steel Battalion tank controller, you’ll find much joy in Chrome Hounds (X360/Sega, From).

For the rest of us, Chrome Hounds is a rewarding title that casual players likely won’t be able to enjoy as thoroughly. The game begins with a description of the war-ravaged Earth, which in this parallel universe never got over the Cold War. You play a mercenary who fights on all sides in a mech capable of holding multiple weapons. Chrome Hounds has the traditional mech-game quirks: the huge, lumbering vehicles move at a snail’s pace (even the wheeled ones), and a complicated control scheme that becomes second nature after a few hours. The game also puts major emphasis on mech customization—every successful fight yields more weapons and parts for your hound.

The missions are a blend of strategy and action. You’ll usually start away from the action and your superior will bark orders at you. Your commanding officer will tell you where to go, by referring to your map, which has been cut up into squares. Every level then feels like a landlocked version of Battleship. This requires switching into map mode frequently (although you can still move your mech when you raise the map). A strange feature is the purposeful lack of mission objective screen, which feels more annoying than ingenious. The missions are varied and each one teaches you a new tool of the trade.

One area where Chrome Hounds falters is graphics and sound. It may be on the Xbox 360, but it looks no better than a late-gen Xbox 1 title. The environments all have a tinge of gray, and the enemies and structures in the single-player lack diversity. When enemies get destroyed, they either just instantaneously evaporate into thin air, or they cause a massive explosion and disappear during that. The 360 is more than capable of making flaming wreckage. The mundane music and sound was also a slight letdown.

The one-player mode and create-a-mech are all just a primer for the game’s online mode. The single player trains you at various positions (like sniper or soldier) so you don’t look like an idiot playing the multiplayer extended campaign or the one-time battle. This is a hardcore fan’s dream come true, but it’s doubtful someone who isn’t mech-obsessed will put the time in to replay the single-player training missions to attain all the objectives. The sheer amount of detail that goes into mech building can also be intimidating at first.

Chrome Hounds is worth a try, and if you aren’t sure how you feel about mech games, you’ll know after playing this one.

No Mickey Mouse pad

The Steelpad 5L is a $50–$60 mousepad built for the professional gamer. Developed by IceMat, it provided solid control for the FPSs I was playing and has a huge surface (15” x 11”) so I never ran my mouse off the pad.

If you’re really serious about FPSs and feel your mousepad is a flimsy piece of plastic holding you back from getting more headshots, this expensive, yet very high quality peripheral might be for you.